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= Lisa Anderson Todd =

Introduction
Lisa Anderson Todd played an important role in the American civil rights movement, as a pioneer for voter registration, and eventually an administrative judge. Todd was a contributor to the success of the civil rights movement and was able to use her legal background and position to benefit the progress of the movement. Todd saw most of her engagement in the movement during the summer of 1964 where she rallied alongside some of the biggest names in the civil rights movement and continued to focus on her legal career. Much of her work in the movement was focused in Mississippi, where she worked with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and with the MFDP at the Democratic National Convention, in Atlantic City. Todd played a part in giving the underclass of Mississippi an opportunity to find their voice and well as the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Early Life
Todd, a Caucasian American, was born Lisa Anderson in Summit, New Jersey on March 2nd, 1942. Her father, Carl Anderson was a corporate lawyer and her mother was a psychiatric social worker. Todd had two older brothers. Todd’s mother did not work after she had children and was a full-time stay-at-home mom because her father was not very involved. Her father was a McCarthy fearing Republican and her mother was not very interested in politics, they were interested in public service but not necessarily activism. In Todd’s adolescence she did not have much exposure to the black community except for in her junior high school but had a significant interest in the poor and less fortunate because of her mother’s poor upbringing. Todd attended an all-girls independent high school in her hometown of Summit, New Jersey before she went to Cornell University.

Education
Todd attended Cornell University for her undergraduate degree where she graduated in June of 1964. In her second semester at Cornell University, Todd joined Kappa Alpha Theta at where she met a diverse and interesting group of women. Todd was a high achieving student and worked extremely hard on her academics during her time at Cornell. Todd’s major while at Cornell and her undergraduate degree is in American Studies Government. During her time at Cornell, Todd was involved in Cornell United Religious Work which was very interested in civil rights. The CURW and a sociology course that Todd took sparked significant interest in the movement, though she was not directly involved in the movement itself. In the summers between her school years at Cornell, Todd was given opportunities to go to work camps to pursue her interest in civil rights and society.

After Cornell, Todd went on to pursue a law degree and Stanford Law School where she graduated from in 1967.

Involvement in the Movement and Activism
Most of Lisa Anderson Todd’s direct involvement with the civil rights movement was during her summers as both an undergraduate and law student. In the summer of 1963, Todd participated in a project at the Ecumenical Voluntary Service of the World Council of Churches at Tougaloo College work camp doing maintenance work and learning about the civil rights movement. While there, Todd participated non-violent training workshops along with her fellow students at the work camp. On August 1, 1963, the camp participants traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi, invited by civil rights activist, Bob Moses, to the SNCC office going to a civil rights meeting. In the following summer, 1964, after her graduation from Cornell University, Todd, alongside around 1,000 college-age volunteers for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project (MSP) sponsored by the Council of Federated Organizations. Todd and the other volunteers worked on voter registration, teaching in Freedom Schools, and helping in community centers around Mississippi. Her main assignment for her voter registration work was in Greenville Mississippi. During that summer, the volunteers primarily promoted voter registration in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The MFDP gave political education, helped candidates run for office, and offered opportunities for involvement in local and statewide meetings for local blacks who were previously denied the ability to vote. Todd helped organize precinct meetings, county conventions and district caucuses to send representatives to the MFDP state convention in Jackson on August 6, 1964. undefined Most of Todd’s time was spent calling locals trying to recruit them to become involved in the party. Throughout her participation in the MFDP, Todd claimed that there were few sanctions and violence inflicted on the volunteers, but more so on community members and local movement participants and activists. This convention elected 68 delegates, black and white, to combat the Mississippi Democratic Party, that was composed entirely of white segregationists, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Through all of the work that summer, the MFDP was only allotted two seats with at-large votes in the Democratic Party.

The influence of the MFDP during Todd’s participation is apparent in their successes during Freedom Summer as well as their lingering impact. During her work with the MFDP Todd and the other volunteers planned a new community center in Greenville named the Herbert Lee Memorial Freedom Center. Their plans of this community center were influential in a civil rights memorial in Montgomery, Alabama that opened in 1989, almost three decades after their work in Freedom Summer.

Todd’s freedom summer work camp assignment led to the formation of an entirely new open political party, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The MFDP gained national recognition and brought attention to the flawed existing, white-washed Democratic Party in Mississippi.

The following summer (1965), Todd returned Mississippi with the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council, where she worked with the National Lawyers Guild. The Guild used member lawyers who volunteered time in Mississippi to identify public facilities that still remained segregated after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and started lawsuits in efforts for desegregation.

After her multiple summers focused on civil rights activism, Todd turned to focus her career on legal work that provided opportunity to under privileged individuals in Washington D.C. Although her career started on a course that complimented her civil rights background, she took a step away from activism to focus on contract law.

Career
After Todd’s graduation from Stanford Law School, she moved across the country to Washington, D.C. and worked for two years in the office of the United Planning Organization, where she worked with the local anti-poverty program. The program received funding from the office of Economic Opportunity and other federal agencies. She also worked with Morgan Lewis and Bockius practicing corporate law in Washington D.C. along with other law firms specializing in government contracts law. In 1983, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration appointed Todd a federal administrative judge. In this position she was responsible to conduct hearings involving contractor disputes. She served in this administrative judge position for over 22 years as well as on the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals at the U.S. Department of Defense. Todd retried from all of her positions in March of 2006.

Life After Activism
Lisa Anderson Todd wrote a memoir released January of 2015 where she detailed her civil rights work. The memoir is titled For a Voice and the Vote: My Journey with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The focus of her memoir is a thorough reflection and description of the MFDP Convention Challenge of the summer of 1964 and her days at the convention in Atlantic City. Though Todd’s memoir was not written until fifty plus years after her civil rights participation, she kept many specific accounts of her time in Mississippi with the MFDP. Throughout her participation with the movement and general activism in the summer of 1963, Todd kept a detailed diary on her experiences in Greenville and her parents saved the letters she sent them during that summer as well. The Memoir has been acclaimed as a successful, heartfelt, and personal account of the immense challenges that activists encountered in the transformation of Mississippi and the progress towards desegregation. Todd provides her personal story on Freedom Summer in Mississippi and Atlantic City along with the problems of the policy making system and existing Democratic Party.

The impact of the MFDP that Todd played a large role in was integral in the passing of policies and the end of many racist statues throughout its presence in the civil rights movement. Represented by Joe Rauh a Washington lawyer and political insider with aid from Martin Luther King Jr., the MFDP successfully confronted President Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert H. Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Walter Reuther, and others to push for black voting rights and an end to racism and oppression in Mississippi and its Democratic Party.

The legacy and immense success of the MFDP and Lisa Anderson Todd, along with many other civil rights heroes and successes contributed in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Todd’s role to recruit new members, candidates, and voters for the MFDP was important for the success and recognition that the party achieved and brought strength and traction to the civil rights movement during the extremely important months of Freedom Summer.